Seven Minutes to Noon

flinching her limbs open in an inchoate certainty of free fall, and rocked her, whispering, “Shush, shush, shush.” But this Ivy, the one in Alice’s arms, didn’t cry; she had no voice. She was a vapor.
    Alice let her arms fall to her sides. The crying she’d heard last night, was it real? She had been so upset about Julius Pollack, she couldn’t stop thinking about Ivy, it had been late at night, and she’d been all alone. Had she imagined it?
    She got up and walked over to the front door. Cracking it open, she listened and listened, but there was nothing, just the heavy silence of early morning.
    * * *
    Eight a.m. came and went. The phone didn’t ring. Nell and Peter were making noise downstairs, getting dressed, when Mike appeared. He stared at Alice a moment as she sat in front of the laptop, an empty teacup at her side.
    “Take a sleeping pill tonight, please, Alice?”
    Since she had known him, his skin in the morning had a special pliability, like warm clay. She always wanted to touch him then. Crossing the kitchen, she raised her face to kiss him. His lips were soft.
    “I will.”
    Alice gave the kids frozen waffles, fresh strawberries and glasses of milk for breakfast. Mike quickly constructed their idiosyncratic lunches. He threw on the work clothes he had arrived home in last night, and in twenty minutes they were all three out the door. She began to clear the breakfast dishes and was just about to load the dishwasher when the phone rang.
    “I’m not calling too early, am I?” It was Pam, not Frannie; but even so, Alice was glad for the call. “I just heard from our morning appointment. The owners don’t want us until later today. Can you do two o’clock?”
    Alice had forgotten she was supposed to meet Pam to see another house.
    “Sure, that’s fine,” Alice said. “Pam? Who works with Julius Pollack at Metro Properties?”
    “He’s got a staff—”
    “No, I mean his partner.”
    “What partner? Pollack works alone as far as I know.”
    Alice told Pam what she had read on the Internet.
    “I’ll see what I can find out. If I get any info before two, I’ll call you. Otherwise I’ll just see you later, okay?”
    “Thanks, Pam. See you at two.”
    Alice hung up and looked at the glowing-green rubber buttons of the phone, realizing she hadn’t yet tried Frannie’s cell number. The detective answered after two rings.
    “What’s going on, Alice? I got your message from lastnight. I had to run out but I was going to call you back in a few minutes.”
    In Frannie’s background, the rumble of an engine crescendoed, then suddenly stopped. Something clacked together rhythmically. Voices.
    “I heard a baby crying last night.” Alice heard the errant hiss of anxiety in her own voice, and heard Frannie hearing it, the warble of disbelief.
    “A baby.”
    “Right here. Upstairs, in my new landlord’s apartment. Julius Pollack. Does that name ring a bell?”
    “It rings a symphony,” Frannie said. “Go on.”
    Alice described everything in detail: her encounter with Julius in the foyer when he was moving in, her continuing search for a house, Pam Short’s discovery that Lauren’s landlord — Metro — was owned by Alice’s new landlord, her visit with Tim as he packed, the crying baby upstairs last night. The pregnancies, the evictions, the coincidences that were twisting a knot in her mind.
    “Did you know he was Lauren’s landlord?” Alice asked.
    “We knew,” Frannie said, “but we didn’t know he was moving in there.”
    “What about Christine Craddock? Was her landlord Metro too? Was she getting evicted from her apartment too?”
    In the pulse of silence that followed, Alice heard the voices behind Frannie collide in argument.
    “Alice, I have to go,” Frannie said, “but it’s good you called.”
    “Do you think he’s got Ivy up there?” Alice gripped her tea bag’s paper tag, folding it with a sharp crease. The string detached and went sailing into what remained of her hours-old tea.
    “It’s doubtful, but we’ll check it out.”
    “What do I do about Julius Pollack? What if I hear the baby again?”
    “Call us right away.”

Chapter 20
    There were so many things to not think about — Ivy, the baby crying upstairs, Metro’s heartless evictions, Julius’s shoes, Tim’s leaving, Maggie’s secret life, Lauren’s corpse buckling back into the canal — and they all floated like slivers of glass beneath the surface of Alice’s consciousness.